The Rogue Slut

To those that continue to ‘blame the patriarchy’: move on

I’ve gotten incredibly tired of people blaming everything I do on my gullible acceptance of “The Patriarchy”.

The first time the blame hit with any intensity was when I did SlutWalk. I had the audacity to be a woman who freely expresses that not only do I love sex, but that anyone who does deserves as much respect as the next person who doesn’t admit the same thing, meaning: nobody deserves to be raped. Included in the legitimate debate and conversations that arose around why we were doing what we were doing was the argument by some people that if a woman wants to look a certain way, it’s for nothing except the male gaze; like women don’t have the right to be sexually aroused by other women, or at all. It’s not us who are stuck living in the Patriarchy, it’s them: those who demand until they’re blue in the face that any type of women’s sexual expression is a result of ingrained patriarchal rules and are the ones maintaining the very system they’re campaigning against.

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Is Kony the new Komen?

If you haven’t been anywhere near the internet this week, you’ll have missed Kony2012, a social media movement that is the brainchild of Invisible Children, an organization working to end the abduction of Ugandan children turned into child soldiers.

The 30 minute documentary has been making the rounds via all media, and now has its lion’s share of criticism. The doc is a call to action for a campaign to find and arrest Joseph Kony who is responsible for thousands of abductions and slaughters in Africa over the last 26 years. Criticised for not being transparent enough, for using too much of its finances for non-charitable purposes, for being too elitist, Invisible Children posted on their site a response to the backlash.

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Nude Photo Revolutionary

In honour of Egyptian blogger Aliaa Elmahdy, who last year posted a nude photo of herself and tweeted it out under the hashtag #NudePhotoRevolutionary, Human Rights Activist Maryam Namazie has launched the Nude Photo Revolutionaries Calendar.

Purchase it in print or download it for free. But whatever you do, share the info and help stop the oppression of women, proving that women are more than simply the sum of their parts.

Sex work is work, just like any other

It’s bullshit that sex work is illegal. A few months ago I listened to an interview with a Pivot lawyer discussing Canadian prostitution laws, where she mentioned that Canada is considering certain methods that would help women not be forced into prostitution because of financial desperation {I’m going to remove trafficking from this post as it’s a different argument all together}. We all do things out of financial desperation that we don’t want to do, but most of them aren’t illegal. 

If I couldn’t find work in my field, I would probably have to resort to a retail job selling shoes. Or dollar store items. Or hamburgers. I hate every one of those options. They would each make me miserable, in turn making those around me miserable, including my family. I would hate waking up in the morning, I would hate commuting by crowded transit to godknowswhatstripmall, I would hate coming home smelling like mall or food {I know it well, I did it in school to pay my way toward an education that was supposed to guarantee that from never happening again}. I would be grouchy. And my family would hate me.

BUT.

If I could legally, it would be nice to have the option to have people pay me for sex, or at least, facilitate meetings between others to have sex. I would create a safe space. A pretty space. I would vet my clients {which you can’t do in most work environments}. I would charge what I wanted. And I would enjoy it. But I can’t do the happy option, because it’s illegal. My government would rather have people in jobs they hate than in jobs they enjoy, because of the simple stigma that sex is bad for them. Well, I think selling shoes for minimum wage is bad for me, but who’s paying attention?

Granted, laws must be put in place to enforce safety and prohibit trafficking. Society drafts laws as forms of protection, because bad things happen: you are prohibited from stealing; you can’t punch someone in the face; you can’t rape someone. All these acts are all illegal to protect society because they are all harmful to our property or bodies. But because sex has a stigma attached to it, our government refuses to draft laws to protect everyone. Robert Pickton had more legal protection with a right to a trial than the almost 50 sex workers he murdered.

As I closely follow the Terri Jean Bedford case and the Vancouver sex trade case, I wait with baited breath to see what our government will say about Canada’s current prostitution laws. It’s all such a hazy tangle of nonsense {the act itself is legal, yet facilitating a deal or living off the avails of that act is not}, that I fear they’ll just be so afraid to untangle it, they’ll give up because that’s the easier road.

Legalizing prostitution would mean sex workers could work in safer environments, clients could be vetted, taxes could be collected. How are any of these things detrimental to society?

I’m also currently watching Satisfaction, a critically acclaimed Australian television series from 2007 about a high end brothel. Prostitution in certain parts of the country are legal, and this series follows a cast of sex workers going about their day to day lives. What strikes me about the show is that many of the conflicts that arise have little or nothing to do with sex work. They can be picked up and dropped into any non-sex situation. Although the show is fictional, I can’t help but feel that the writers just ‘get it’. That sex work is like any other form of work, and if you remove the stigma, we’re all the better for it. Well produced and well written, the series lasted three seasons. It obviously didn’t ruffle enough feathers in Australia to get it cancelled after a few episodes {cough <The Playboy Club> cough}. Apparently, many Australians ‘just get it’.

If we in the west can grow up and realize that safe sex doesn’t kill us, then we can move forward to creating an industry that will be safer for the workers and profitable for the country. 

Sex is never going to go away. If it does, we’re all in trouble. 

Esoterica: Full list of companies that pulled ads from All American Muslim

Women have sex and enjoy it. Get the fuck over it.

Melissa Petro. Madison Young. And now Sasha Grey. These are women who did or do work in the sex industry, and for it, they are unapologetic. But for those who have a stick up their ass when it comes to sex and are unfortunately in positions of power, these women have been ridiculed for their work, both in and outside the bedroom {or studio or hotel room, or wherever they’ve performed the deed}.

Melissa Petro is a teacher that paid her way through school by working as a Craigslist prostitute. When she admitted by way of a Huffington Post article that her past included sex work, and when she did not deride that work, she was humiliated, criticized and finally let go of her job teaching at a school in New York, despite her reputation as “inspiring”.

Madison Young is a porn entrepreneur who not only performs sex on screen, but also owns a feminist art gallery in San Francisco that shows work from various media, and it’s not {shock!} all porn. When she promoted an exhibition with a photo of her dressed like a matronly Marilyn Monroe, complete with her new baby at her breast, there was a twitter scandal, where another sex worker accused her of pedophilia. How dare she pose with her daughter? It essentially came down to her daring to be a real person, including a new mother.

The latest sex-related scandal is this week’s furor that former porn star Sasha Grey ignited when she read in front of Grade 1 and 3 students for her part in the Read Across America program in Compton. Once parents discovered that this former sex worker had the audacity to read a book to promote literacy, all hell broke loose. 

Apparently sex workers — former or not — aren’t entitled to experience everyday activities, or be contributing members of society.

In a country where the education rating has fallen to “average”, where public schools have poor funding and not enough good teachers, where culture and arts are hit with budget cuts, it’s these very people who are fighting against the tide. Despite performing consensual acts, these women aren’t only fighting to be part of society, but also to better it. And just like everyone else, they pay taxes, take their children to school, donate to charities. Yet many people would rather rally behind sports heroes who keep dangerous secrets.

These women can be added to the list that include Kendra Holliday, who lost her job and was close to losing custody of her daughter for being outed as a sex-blogger; as well as Girl With a One Track Mind author, Zoe Margolis, and to some extent, Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of Diary of a London Call Girl, who both wrote about their sexual exploits, yet were ridiculed for expressing themselves as human beings. Whether you’re up front about who you are, or try to fly under the radar, your experiences as a woman in touch with her sexual self will be eventually held up for all to see and used as the yardstick in which to compare the rest of your life.

These women need to be commended for not only doing what they had or wanted to do, but for fighting back against the stigma. Melissa Petro has since written about her firing; Madison Young commented on the accusation against her and Sasha Grey issued a statement about her work with Read Across America. Good on all of them.

You don’t find this kind of hard work, ingenuity and determination in too many people, especially when that work is to help others. Critics need to step off, and let those with creativity and a desire to make a difference do their jobs.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Every few days I try and accumulate a rundown of all the week’s events, as research notes for the book I’m writing.

I record links, Facebook posts, twitter hashtags, etc. along with some personal notes so I can go back to them when I’m ready to get down to the nitty gritty. I need to do this as my memory just isn’t what it used to be. I feel like I need to write everything down, or it leaves my brain when I need it and only returns when it’s too late.

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Jessica Valenti: #mencallmethings